“Even if they'd known that an attack had just been struck by one of their parents, they'd also have known that it wasn't their battle.”

“They were ticking off items on a to-do list that was magnet-attached to the fridge. There were nineteen items on the list. They'd crossed off fifteen. The final item was underlined: Make a life.”

“Kate had always known that she herself was a strong woman. But it never occured to her that there were strong women everywhere, living mundane lives that didnt include carrying weapons amid desperate men on the fringes of third-world wars, but instead calmly taking injured children to hospitals, far from home. Far from their mothers, and fathers and siblings, from school chums and old collegues. In a place where they had no one to rely on except them-selves, for everything.”

“She understood that he had to work, and he had to travel. But what he didn't have to do was be absent even when he was present.”

“It hasn't taken long to find herself thinking that people are watching. And that they always have been, all the time. It was only a few months ago that Kate had finally been able to imagine she was living a totally surveillance-free life.”

“Travel wasn't fun if you didn't get to see or do what you wanted; it was merely a different type of work, in a different place.”

“It would make a lot more sense if she had imagined this whole thing, her whole life. Now would just be now, attached to some other, more straightforward past.”